By Brian Lee
It’s been a long time since I paid much attention to Major League Baseball but something flashed across a screen somewhere that reminded me about a forgotten nugget of local trivia.
By the time you read this the Detroit Tigers have likely clinched the American League central division.
Who cares, right? But riddle me this:
Why were the mid-1980s Detroit Tigers Pender Harbour’s (and possibly the entire Sunshine Coast’s) favourite baseball team? Detroit’s iconic D adorned far more baseball playing kids caps than Toronto’s blue jay or the Expos’ M. It could have something to do with Detroit setting the record for the best start in 1984, winning 35 of their first 40 games before going on to win the World Series in five games. They hit more home runs than anyone else and had the best pitchers. Local Tiger fans had their favourites with names like Trammell, Gibson and Hernandez tossed around like those of Kesler and Sedin are these days.
But the fact that many of those fans also had more than a passing familiarity with names like Dearborn, Lansing or Ann Arbor points to something else. They’re all unremarkable cities in Michigan and, if they ring a bell, you probably lived here in the mid-’80s. The reason is that, prior to 1983, television here consisted of only a couple channels — if I’m not mistaken, they were CBC and CHEK TV. When cable came to the sticks we were suddenly introduced to a variety of channels including the big three American cable networks. And, for some random property of TV science, this cosmopolitan world came to us through the lens of local Detroit TV stations.
It didn’t matter there was a three hour time difference from posted listings in TV Guide. It just allowed you to find out how many people were murdered in Detroit that day before you watched our news. And, it meant Saturday Night Live came on at 8:30 p.m. instead of 11:30 p.m. That’s something I still miss.
But the fact that every Detroit Tigers baseball game was televised meant the Toronto Blue Jays could no longer compete for our attention. How could you not give in to the heroics of a late inning Kirk Gibson home run or the fact that the team on your TV rarely lost?
And, as if the Tigers heating up at the exact moment Detroit television landed here wasn’t enough to release a perfect storm of baseball synergy, there was Magnum P.I. Everybody wanted to be, or be with, Magnum P.I. in 1984. And guess whose baseball cap Magnum wore as he chased down Hawaiian bad guys in his Ferrari?
Hint: It wasn’t the Blue Jays.
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